Delivery of Asthma Management Services by a Federally Qualified Health Center in an Urban Setting

As a chronic disease, asthma presents a significant public health challenge nationally and in Georgia. In 2007, over 22 million people, including over 9 million children, had asthma in the United States. In Georgia, 230,000, or 10% of children have asthma, which is more prevalent among children less than 18 years of age than among adults. While asthma affects people of all ages and socioeconomic status, low income and minority populations have the highest asthma morbidity. This has proven to be the case with residents of Neighborhood Planning Unit V (NPU-V), a low-income minority community located in southeast Atlanta. Children comprise 35% of NPU-V\u27s population, and over half of them live below the poverty line. Among other concerns, children with asthma have higher rates of hospitalization and absenteeism from school than their peers. The hospitalization rates for children with asthma in South Atlanta aged 0-17 years of age is almost five times the rate of North Fulton County. The Georgia State University Institute of Public Health received grant funding for the planning and implementation of the Accountable Communities: Healthy Together-Asthma (ACHT-A) program to help address the problems associated with asthma in NPU-V and among patients of Southside Medical Center (SMC). The capstone project involved development of an evaluation plan for future determinations about the program’s effectiveness in achieving desired outcomes. The evaluation process included development of a logic model and putting systems in place to track and measure specific indicators. The project culminated in a preliminary assessment of selected program activities to establish baseline information for the program, its participants, and SMC staff